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Is it really normal for American high school teachers to lecture for the entire period? No exercises, just note-taking? I hazard to guess that the British stud

Is it really normal for American high school teachers to lecture for the entire period? No exercises, just note-taking? I hazard to guess that the British students prefer copying things from a chalkboard because it's a novelty and requires considerably less effort than doing exercises. If they did it on a regular basis they'd quickly get bored.

yareally 11y ago
Depends on the class. History tends to have a lot of lectures. Science classes, math and English I don't recall as many (this was about 10 years ago). Also varies by teacher and I would assume school.
- eastbayjake 11y ago
  Math is probably the class that most easily follows this pattern: the teacher demonstrates how to solve a category of problem, the entire class practices it together with the teacher calling on students to provide answers, then after students are confidently solving the problem together they try to solve them independently -- a process that usually continues after class with homework problem sets. Science classes in higher-income schools often follow this method too -- present a problem/question, introduce some bit of science knowledge, then investigate with a lab -- but low-income schools lack the resources to do lots of labs and as a result it's a lot of copying vocab/notes and doing problem sets that tend to be vocabulary-heavy.
  - yareally 11y ago
    Yeah, I think that sounds reasonable to me. I was thinking about my history classes more and there was a decent amount of interaction, just my memory about it was a bit fuzzy, since I haven't thought about the classes themselves in some years. It had a decent amount of q/a and discussion, but it's rather hard to escape lectures in history. They didn't bother me though, since I had great history teachers that knew their stuff and made the lectures themselves interesting through anecdotes and personal experience. History was always my favorite subject, even though I obtained a degree in computer science.
aidenn0 11y ago
It was when I was in High School. I used to alternate with a friend: one brings the notebook, one brings the pillow. Pro Tip: Do not try the above in English class; many teachers will use subjectively graded assignments to punish you for sleeping through their lectures.

yareally 11y ago

Depends on the class. History tends to have a lot of lectures. Science classes, math and English I don't recall as many (this was about 10 years ago). Also varies by teacher and I would assume school.

eastbayjake 11y ago
Math is probably the class that most easily follows this pattern: the teacher demonstrates how to solve a category of problem, the entire class practices it together with the teacher calling on students to provide answers, then after students are confidently solving the problem together they try to solve them independently -- a process that usually continues after class with homework problem sets. Science classes in higher-income schools often follow this method too -- present a problem/question, introduce some bit of science knowledge, then investigate with a lab -- but low-income schools lack the resources to do lots of labs and as a result it's a lot of copying vocab/notes and doing problem sets that tend to be vocabulary-heavy.
- yareally 11y ago
  Yeah, I think that sounds reasonable to me. I was thinking about my history classes more and there was a decent amount of interaction, just my memory about it was a bit fuzzy, since I haven't thought about the classes themselves in some years. It had a decent amount of q/a and discussion, but it's rather hard to escape lectures in history. They didn't bother me though, since I had great history teachers that knew their stuff and made the lectures themselves interesting through anecdotes and personal experience. History was always my favorite subject, even though I obtained a degree in computer science.

aidenn0 11y ago

It was when I was in High School. I used to alternate with a friend: one brings the notebook, one brings the pillow. Pro Tip: Do not try the above in English class; many teachers will use subjectively graded assignments to punish you for sleeping through their lectures.